But _people of mind_ will have their characters all of a piece and

_consistent_ (since they can have them so only in books). There is not

an aim of the human soul which is not reflected in this conception.

Ulysses is perhaps the strongest type in all ancient literature, and

Hamlet of all modern.

If I were not so weary, I should express my thought at greater length;

it is so easy to prattle about the beautiful; but to say in proper style

"Shut the door," or "He has a desire to sleep," requires more genius

than to make all the Courses of Literature in the world.

Criticism is the lowest round on the ladder of literature, nearly always

in form and in moral value; incontestably it comes after the end-rhyme

and the acrostic, which demand at least the work of some invention.

Now, adieu.

TO LOUIS BOUILHET.

TROUVILLE, _Aug. 23, 1853_.

WHAT a confounded rain! How it falls! Everything is imbedded in water!

From my window I can see bonnets passing shielded by red umbrellas;

barques are putting out to sea; I hear the chains of the anchors which

they are raising with general imprecations addressed to the bad weather.

If it lasts three or four days more, which seems to me probable, we

shall pack up and return home.

Admire here one of the polite ways of Providence which would be hard to

believe: in whose house have I lodgings? In the house of a chemist! And

of whom is he the pupil? Of Dupré! Like him, he deals in Seltzer water!

"I am the only one in Trouville who manufactures Seltzer water" he says.

In fact, at eight o'clock in the morning I am often awakened by the

noise of corks which go off unexpectedly. Pif! paf! The kitchen is the

laboratory as well as kitchen; a monstrous still stands humbly among the

stewpans:

The frightful length of its copper smoking,

and often they cannot put on the dinner-pot because of pharmaceutical

preparations. In order to go into the yard, it is necessary to pass over

baskets filled with bottles. There creaks a pump which wets your legs;

two boys are rinsing decanters; a parrot repeats from morning till

night: "Have you breakfasted, Jacko?" and finally, a brat about ten

years old, the son of the house and the hope of the pharmacy, exercises

in all sorts of athletics, such as raising himself from the ground by

his teeth.

This journey to Trouville has brought the whole inner story of my life

before me. I have dreamed much in this theatre of my passions. I now

take leave of them forever, I hope; in the part of life that remains,

there is time to say adieu to youthful sadness. I cannot conceal,

however, that it has come back to me in waves, during the last three

weeks. I have had two or three good afternoons in full sunlight, all

alone upon the sand, where I found again some other sad things beside

broken shells! But I have finished with it now, God be thanked! We shall

now cultivate our garden and no more raise our head at the cry of the

crows.

How I long to finish _Bovary_, _Anubis_, and my three prefaces, in order

to enter a new period and give myself up to the "purely beautiful!" The

idleness in which I have lived for some time gives me the cutting desire

to transform through art all that is "myself," all that I have felt. I

feel no need of writing my memoirs; my personality even repels me, and

immediate objects seem hideous or stupid. I go back to former ideas. I

arrange the barques into old-time ships. I undress the sailors who pass,

to make savages of them walking naked upon the silver shores; I think of

India, of China, of my Oriental story (of which fragments are coming to

me), and I feel like undertaking gigantic epics.

But life is so short! I never can write as I wish, nor the quarter part

of what I dream. All that force that we feel and that stifles us must

die with us without being allowed to overflow!

I revisited yesterday a village two hours' journey from here, where I

went with that good Orlowski when I was eleven years old. Nothing was

changed about the houses, the cliff, or the fishing-boats. The women at

the wash-house were sewing in the same position, the same number were

beating their soiled linen in the same blue water, and it rained a

little as in former times. It seemed, at certain moments that the

universe had become immovable, that everything had become a statue, and

that we alone were living. And how insolent nature is! What waggishness

on her impudent visage! One tortures his mind trying to comprehend the

abyss that separates him from her, but something comes up more farcical

still, that is, the abyss that separates us from ourselves. When I think

that here, in this place, on looking at this white wall off-setting the

green, I had some heart throbs, and that I was full of "poesy," I am

amazed, lost in a vertigo, as if I had suddenly discovered myself on the

peak of a wall two thousand feet high.

This little work that I am doing, I shall complete this winter, when you

are no longer there, poor old man! to arrange, burn, and, classify all

my scribblings. With the _Bovary_ finished, the age of reason will

begin. And then, why encumber ourselves with so many souvenirs? The past

eats up too much and we are never in the present, which alone is

important in life. How I philosophise! I have need to, since you are

there! It is difficult to write; words are wanting, and I should prefer

being extended on my bear-skin, near you, discoursing "melancholically"

together.

Do you know that in the last number of the _Review_ our friend Leconte

was very badly treated? They are definitely low rascals; and "the

phalanx" is a dog-kennel. All the animals there are much more stupid

than ferocious. You who love the word "paltry," be assured that is what

it is.

Write me an immeasurable letter as soon as you can, and embrace yourself

for me; adieu.

TO MADAME X.

CROISSET, _Wednesday evening, Midnight_.

I HAVE taken up the _Bovary_ again, and since Monday have five pages

almost done; _almost_ is the word, for it is necessary to take it up

again. How difficult it is! I fear that my _comices_ (primary meetings)

may be too long; it is a hard place. I have there all the personages of

my book in action and in dialogue, mingled with one another, and beyond

them all is a great landscape which envelopes them; if I can succeed

with it, it will be very symphonic.

Bouilhet has finished the descriptive part of his _Fossils_. His

mastodon ruminating in the moonlight on a prairie is enormously full of

poesy and will be, perhaps, to the public, the most effective of all his

pieces! There only remains the philosophic part, which is the last.

About the middle of next month, he will go to Paris to select a lodging

where he can install himself the first of November. Would that I were in

his place!

Decidedly, the article by Verdun on Leconte (which I have an idea is

Jourdan's) is more stupid than hostile; I have laughed much at the

comparison they make with the _beautiful lines_ of the _Fall of an

Angel_; what bearish politeness! As for the _Indian Poems_ and the piece

about _Dies iræ_, not a word. There is a certain ingenuousness about

them, but why call the _sperchius_, _sperkhios_? That seems to me a true

_janoterie_. What has become of the good Leconte,--is he progressing

with his Celtic poem?

I have been re-reading some of Boileau, or rather all of Boileau, and

with my pencil on the margin. This seems to me truly strong; one does

not tire of what is well written, for style is life! It is the blood of

the thought! Boileau has a little river, straight, not deep, but

admirably limpid and well within its banks; and that is the reason why

the waters have not dried up; nothing is lost of what he wishes to say.

But how much art he has used and with so little effort!

Within the next two or three years, I intend to re-read attentively all

the French classics and to annotate them; this is work that will serve

me in _my prefaces_ (my work of literary critic, you know); I wish to

state there the insufficiency of schools as they are, and to declare

plainly that we make no claim to being one of them, we outsiders, nor is

it necessary to be one of them. On the contrary, we are in the line of

transmission; that seems to me strictly exact; it reassures and

encourages me. What I admire in Boileau is what I admire in Hugo; and

where one has been good, the other is excellent. There is only one

standard of beauty; it is the same everywhere, although under different

aspects, and more or less coloured by the reflections that dominate it.

Voltaire and Chateaubriand, for example, were mediocre for the same

reasons, etc. I shall try to make it seen why the æsthetic critic is so

much behind the historic and scientific critic; he has never had any

base. The knowledge that is wanting is that of the anatomy of style; to

know how a phrase is constructed, and where it should be attached. They

study manikins and translations with professors,--imbeciles incapable of

holding the instrument of the science they teach (I mean the pen), and

the result is, they lack life!

Love! Love! the secret of the good God which does not easily give itself

up,--the soul, without which nothing is understood.

When I have finished that (and the _Bovary_ and _Anubis_ first of all),

I shall without doubt, enter into a new phase, and it seems slow getting

there; I, who write so slowly, am gnawed by my plans. I wish to produce

two or three long, epic antiques--romances in a grandiose setting, where

the action may be forcefully fertile and the details rich in themselves,

and luxurious and tragic as a whole; books of grand mural painting, of

heroic size.

There was in the _Revue de France_ (a fragment by Michelet upon Danton)

a judgment of Robespierre that pleased me much; it stamped him as being

in himself a government; and it was for that reason that all Republican

governmental maniacs loved him. Mediocrity cherishes rules, but I hate

them. I feel myself against them and against all restrictions,

corporations, caste, hierarchy, levels, and droves, with an execration

that fills my soul; it is on this side, perhaps, that I comprehend the

martyr.

Adieu, beautiful ex-democrat.

TO MADAME X.

CROISSET, _Wednesday, Midnight_.

HAVE you still your tooth? Take steps, then, immediately to have it

removed. There is nothing in the world worse than physical pain; and it

is worse than death for a man, as Montaigne says, "to put himself under

the skin of a calf to escape it." Pain has this evil: it makes us feel

life too much; it gives us, as it were, a proof of malediction to

ourselves which weighs upon us; it humiliates us, and that is sad for

beings that are sustained solely by their pride.

Certain natures suffer not so much, and people without nerves are happy;

but of how many things are they not deprived? According as one rises in

the scale of being, the nervous faculty increases, that is, the faculty

for suffering. Are to suffer and to think the same thing, then? Is

genius, after all, only a refinement of pain, that is to say, a

meditation of the objective through the soul?

The sadness of Molière came wholly from the human stupidity which he

felt contained in himself; he suffered from the Diaforus and Tartuffes

which passed before the eyes of his brain. Do you not suppose that the

soul of a Veronese imbibes colour like a piece of stuff plunged into the

boiling vat of a dyer? All things appear to him as if magnifying glasses

were before his eyes. Michael-Angelo said that marble trembled at his

approach; what is sure is, that he himself trembled when he approached

marble. Mountains, for this man, had souls; they were of a corresponding

nature and there was a sympathy between them like that between

analogous elements. And this should establish, I know not where or how,

some kind of volcanic train that would make poor human implements

explode.

I find myself nearly half through my _comices_. I have made fifteen

pages this month, not finished them,--but whether they are good or bad,

I know not. How difficult dialogue is when one especially wishes it to

have character; to paint by dialogue, and keep it lively, precise, and

distinguished while it remains commonplace is monstrous, and I know of

no one who has done this in a book. It is necessary to write the

dialogue in comedy, while the narrative takes the epic style.

This evening I began again that accursed page about the lamps which I

have already written four times; it is enough to make one beat his head

against a wall! I am trying to paint (in one page) the gradations of the

enthusiasm of a multitude watching a good man as he places many lamps in

succession upon the outside of the mayor's residence; it is necessary to

make seen the crowd howling with astonishment and joy, and that without

any apparent motive or reflection on the part of the author.

You are astonished at some of my letters, you say; you find in them

well-written, pretty malice; well, I write what I think; but when it

comes to writing for others, and making them speak as they would have

spoken, what a difference! A moment ago, for example, I was trying to

show in a dialogue a particular man who must be at the same time

good-natured, commonplace, a little vulgar and pretentious! And beyond

all this one must make sure that the point is clear. In a word, all the

difficulties that we have in writing come from a lack of order. It is a

conviction that I now have, that if you are troubled to give the right

turn to an expression, it is sure that _you have not the idea_. A very

clear image or sentiment in the head leads to the word on paper. The one

flows from the other. "Whatever is well conceived," etc.... I have been

re-reading this in old father Boileau; or rather I have read him

entirely again (I am now on his prose works), and find him a master man

and a great writer rather than a poet. But how stupid they have made him

out! What paltry interpreters he has had! The race of college

professors, pedants of pale ink, have lived upon him and stretched him

thin, chattering over him like a cloud of locusts in a tree. He was not

dense! No matter, he was solid of root and well planted, straight and

well-poised.

The literary critic seems to me a thing to be made anew; those who have

meddled with it are not of the trade, and while perhaps they know the

anatomy of a phrase, they have not a drop of the physiology of style.

And about _La Servante_? Why was I afraid that it would not be long?

Because it is better to be too long than too short, although the general

defect of poets is the length, as it is of prose writers, which makes

the first wearisome and the second disgusting. Lamartine, Eugène Suë....

Verse in itself is so convenient for disguising the absence of ideas!

Analyse a beautiful passage of verse and another of prose, and you will

see which is the fuller. Prose, art aside, must needs bristle with

things to be discovered; but in verse the most trifling things appear.

Thus we may say in comparison that the most unnoticed idea in a phrase

of prose may suffice to make a whole sonnet; often, three or four plans

are necessary in a prose work; do we expect to find this in poetry?

I have at this moment a great rage for Juvenal. What style! what style!

and what a language Latin is! I also flatter myself that I begin to

understand Sophocles a little. As for Juvenal, it goes along smoothly

enough, save here and there for some hidden meaning, which I quickly

perceive. I should much like to know, and with many details, why Saulcy

refused Leconte's article; what are the motives alleged? This must be

interesting for us to know; try to get at the last word of the story.

Try to be better and to work better in Paris than in the country, for

you have all your time to yourself. I grudge this poor Leconte his

experience. In order to follow this trade as Bouilhet has for four

years, eight and ten hours a day (and he had the boarding-house keepers

at his back more than Leconte), I believe it is necessary to have the

strongest constitution and a cerebral temperament of Titanic endurance.

He will have merited glory as much as the other, but one can go to

heaven only as a martyr, mounting on high with a crown of thorns, a

pierced heart, bleeding hands and radiant face.

Adieu; a thousand kisses for thee!

TO MADAME X.

CROISSET, _Wednesday, Midnight_.

MY HEAD is on fire, as I remember to have had it after passing long days

on horseback, because to-day I have rudely ridden my pen. I have

written since half-past twelve without stopping (save for five minutes

at one time and another to smoke a pipe, and about an hour for dinner).

My _comices_ were such a trial to me that I have broken loose from them,

even to the extent of calling them finished, both Greek and Latin; from

to-day, I do no more of them; it is too hard! it would be the death of

me, and I wish to go to see you.

Bouilhet pretends that it will be the most beautiful scene in the book.

What I am sure of is that it will be new and that the intention is good.

If ever the effects of a symphony were reported in a book, it will be

here. It is necessary for the roar to be heard through it all: the

bellowing of the bulls, the sighs of love, and the phrases of the

administrators at once distinguishable; and over all the sunlight and

the gusts of wind that fan the large bonnets into motion. The most

difficult passages of _Saint Antony_ were child's play in comparison. I

have come to nothing dramatic except the interlacing of the dialogue and

opposition in characters. I am now in the open; before another week, I

shall have passed the knot upon which all depends. My brain seems too

small to take in at a single glance this complex situation. I have

written ten pages at a time, skipping from one phrase to another.

I am almost sure that Gautier did not see you in the street when he did

not salute you; he is like myself, very near-sighted, and with me such

things are customary. It would have been a gratuitous insolence, which

is not his manner of behaviour; he is a great, good-natured man, very

peaceful and very p----. As for espousing the animosities of a friend,

I strongly doubt it, from the way in which he spoke to me in the first

place. The dedication, in spite of your opinion, proves nothing at all

_pro_ or _con_. The poor boy hangs to everything, tacks his name to

everything that is descending this Nile! If anyone could strengthen me

in my literary theories, it would be he. The farther off the time when

Ducamp followed my advice, the more he goes down; for, between _Galaor_

and the _Nil_ there is a frightful decadence, and in the _Livre

posthume_, which is between them, he is at his lowest, and the force of

the young Delessert is no better. Jacotot's proposition was strangely

revolting to me, and you were in the right. You try to be polite to a

scamp like that? oh! no, no, no!

What a strange creature you are, dear friend, to send me diatribes

still, as my chemist would call them. You ask me for a thing, I say

"Yes," and you still continue to mutter! Oh, well! since you conceal

nothing from me (which I approve), I will not conceal from you that this

appears to me to be a bad habit with you. You wish to establish between

relations of a different nature a bond of which I cannot see the sense

or the utility. I do not at all comprehend how the kindnesses you show

me when I am in Paris, affect my mother in any way. For three years I

have been at the Schlesingers', where she has never set foot. In the

same way, Bouilhet has been coming here every Sunday for eight years to

sleep, dine and lunch, but we have not once seen his mother, who comes

to Rouen nearly every month; and I assure you that my mother is not at

all shocked. Nevertheless, it shall be according to your wish. I promise

you, I swear it, that I will explain to her your reasons and that I

will pray her to bring it about that you may see each other. As for the

outcome, with the best will in the world, I can do nothing; perhaps you

will please each other much, perhaps you will displease each other

enormously. The good woman is not very approachable, and she has ceased

to see not only all her old acquaintances but even her friends; I know

only one of them and she does not live in the country.

I have just finished Boileau's Correspondence; he was less narrow among

his intimates than in _Apollon_. I found there many confidences that

corrected his judgments. _Télémaque_ was harshly enough judged, etc.,

and he avows that Malherbe was not a poet. But have you not noticed of

how little value is the correspondence of the great men of that time? It

is, in fact, all commonplace. Lyricism in France is a new faculty; I

believe that the education of the Jesuits has been a considerable

misfortune to letters. They have taken nature away from art. Since the

end of the sixteenth century, even to the time of Hugo, all books,

however beautiful they may be, smell of the dust of the college. I am

now going to re-read all my French and to take a long time to prepare my

history of the poetical sentiment of France. It is necessary to write

criticism as one would write a natural history, _with the absence of

moral idea_; it is not for us to declaim upon such and such a form, but

to show in what it consists, how it is attached to another and by what

it lives (æstheticism awaits its Saint-Hilaire, that great man who has

shown the legitimacy of monsters). When the human soul is treated with

the impartiality with which physical science is treated in the study of

material things, an immense step will have been taken; it is the only

means by which humanity can put itself above itself. It will then

consider itself frankly through the mirror of its works; it will be like

God and judge from on high.

Well, I believe that feasible; perhaps, as in mathematics, we have only

to find the method. Before all, it will be applicable to art and to

religion, which are the two great manifestations of the idea. Suppose

one begins thus: the first idea of God being given (the most simple

possible), the first poetic sentiment being born (the most slender that

could be), each finds at first its manifestation, and easily finds it in

the savage infant, etc.; here is, then, the first point: you have

already established relations. Now, if one were to continue, making

count of all relative contingents, climate, language, etc.; then, from

degree to degree one could come up to the art of the future, and the

hypothesis of the Beautiful, to a clear conception of its reality, to

that ideal type where all our effort should tend; but it is not for me

to charge myself with this task, for I have other pens to cut.

Adieu.

TO MADAME X.

CROISSET, _Friday, Midnight, 1854_.

I HAVE passed a sad week, not because of my work, but on your account,

and because of my thoughts concerning you. I will tell you more

privately the personal reflections that were the result of this state of

mind.

You believe that I do not love you, my poor dear friend, and say that

you are only a secondary consideration in my life. I have hardly any

human affection for anyone greater than I feel for you, and as for

affection towards woman, I swear to you that you stand first in my

heart,--the only one; and I will affirm further: I never have felt a

similar love--so prolonged, so sweet, above all, so profound.

As to the question of my immediate installation in Paris, I must give up

the plan at once; it is _impossible_ to carry it out now, to say nothing

of the money I should have but have not. I know myself well: it would

mean the loss of the winter; and perhaps of my book. Bouilhet spoke very

easily about it, he, who is fortunate enough to be able to write

anywhere, who for twelve years worked in continual confusion. But for me

it is like beginning a new life. I am like a pan of milk--in order that

cream shall rise, I must not be disturbed! But I say to you again: if

you _wish_ that I should come, now, instantly, for a month, two months,

four months, cost what it may, I will go. If not, this is my plan: from

the present time until I finish _Bovary_, I will visit you

oftener,--eight times in two months, without missing a week, except for

that time when you will not be able to see me until the end of January.

Then we shall meet regularly through April, June, and September, and in

a year I shall be very near the end of my book.

I have talked over all this with my mother. Do not accuse her, even in

your heart, because she is on your side. I have concluded pecuniary

settlements with her, and she is about to make arrangements for the care

of my rooms, my linen, etc., for a year. I have engaged a servant whom I

shall take to Paris, so you see that my resolution is not wholly

unshakeable, and if I am not buried here under about three hundred

pages, you may see me before long installed in the capital. I shall

disturb nothing at my rooms, because I always work best there, and I

shall probably pass most of my time there, on account of my mother, who

is growing old; so reassure yourself, I shall show enough filial

affection, and be very good!

Do you know whither the sadness of all this has led me, and what I

should like to do? I should like to throw literature to the winds

forever, to do nothing more, but go and live with you! I say to myself;

Is art worth so much trouble, so much weariness for me, so many tears

for her? Of what use is all this effort, perhaps to arrive only at

mediocrity in the end? For I own to you that I am not cheerful; I have

sad doubts at times regarding myself and my work. I have just re-read

_Novembre_, from curiosity. I did the same thing eleven years ago

to-day. I had so far forgotten it that it seemed quite new to me, but it

is not good, and the effect is not satisfactory. I see no way of

re-writing it; I should be compelled to recast it entirely, because

although here and there I find a good phrase, a good comparison, there

is no homogeneity of style. Conclusion: _Novembre_ will go the same way

with _Sentimental Education_, and will remain with it indefinitely in my

portfolio. Ah, what good sense I showed in my youth not to publish! How

I should have blushed for it now!

I am about to write a monumental letter to the "Crocodile." Hasten to

send me yours, because it is several days since my mother wrote to

Madame Farmer, and she persecutes me to let her read my letter before I

send it away.

I am re-reading Montaigne. It is singular how I am filled with the

spirit of this good fellow! Is this a coincidence, or is it because when

I was eighteen years old I read only Montaigne during a whole

twelvemonth? I am really astonished, however, to find very often in his

writings the most delicate analysis of my own sentiments. He has the

same tastes, the same opinions, the same manner of living, the same

manias. There are persons I admire more than Montaigne, but there is no

one I would evoke more gladly, or with whom I could talk better.

Thine ever.

TO LAURENT PICHAT

(Director of the _Revue de Paris_.)

CROISSET, _Thursday evening, 1856_.

MY DEAR FRIEND: I have just received the _Bovary_, and I feel that I

must thank you immediately (for if I am somewhat churlish, I am not an

ingrate). You have rendered me a great service in accepting this work,

such as it is, and I shall not forget it.

Confess that you have found me, and that you still find me (more than

ever, perhaps) possessed of a ridiculous amount of vehemence. I should

like to own some day that you are right; I promise that when that time

comes I will make you the most abject excuses! But understand, dear

friend, that it was only an experiment I attempted, and I hope the

workmanship is not too crude.

Will you believe me when I tell you that the ignoble realism you find in

my story, the reproduction of which disgusts you, revolts me quite as

much? If you knew me better, you would know that I hold commonplace

existence in execration. I always seclude myself from it as much as

possible. But, for æsthetic purposes, I wished this time--and only this

time--to exploit it from its very foundation. So I have undertaken the

matter in a heroic way; I listened to the minutest details; I accepted

all, said all, painted all,--an ambitious attempt.

I explain myself badly, but it is enough that you comprehend the reason

for my resistance of your criticisms, judicious as they were. You will

make another book for me! You struck at the poetic foundation whence

springs the type (as a philosopher would say) from which the work was

conceived. In short, I should have failed in what I owe to myself, and

also in what I owe to you, if I had yielded as an act of deference and

not of conviction.

Art demands neither complaisance nor politeness,--nothing but

faith--faith and liberty! And on that point we may join hands!

Under an unfruitful tree, whose branches are always green, I am

Faithfully yours.

TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.

1857.

MY GOOD FRIEND: I believe it is always considered proper to wash one's

soiled linen. Now I will wash mine immediately. You say you have been

"very much vexed" at me, and you must feel so still, if you really

suppose that I had, in company with Aubeyet, said anything against

either yourself or your works. I am writing this in all seriousness.

Such an accusation chokes me, wounds me. I am made so--I cannot help it.

Know, then, that such cowardly conduct is completely antipathetic to me.

I do not allow anyone to say, in my presence, anything about my friends

that I would not say myself to their faces. And if a stranger opens his

mouth to lie about them, I close it for him immediately. The contrary

custom is the usual thing, I know, but it is not my way. Let us have no

more discussion of this! If you do not know me better than that by this

time, all the worse for you! Let us consider less serious matters, and

give me your word of honour, for the future, never again to judge me as

if I were a stranger.

Know also, O Feydeau! that I am not a bit of a _farceur_. There is no

animal in the world more serious than I! Sometimes I laugh, but I joke

very little, and less now than ever before. I am sick, as a result of

fear; all sorts of anguish fill my being. I am about to write once more!

No, my good fellow, I'm not so stupid! I shall not show you anything of

my story of Carthage until the last line is written, because I am

already assailed with doubts enough about it without adding to them

those you would express. Your observations would make me "lose the

ball." As to the archæology, that will be "probable." And that's all!

Provided no one can prove that I have written absurdities, that is all I

ask. As to the botanical queries that may arise, I can laugh at them. I

have seen with my own eyes all the plants and all the trees that I need

for my purpose.

Besides, all this matters very little; it is quite a secondary

consideration. A book may be full of enormities and blunders, and yet be

none the less beautiful. If this doctrine were admitted, it would be

considered deplorable, of course; especially in France, where reigns the

pedantry of ignorance! But I see in the contrary tendency (which is

mine, alas!) a great danger. The study of the external makes us forget

the soul. I would give the half-ream of notes that I have written during

the past five months, and the ninety-eight books that I have read, to

be, for three seconds only, really stirred by the passion and emotion

experienced by my heroes! Let us guard against the temptation to deal

with trifles, or we shall find ourselves belonging to the coffee-cup

school of the Abbé Delille. There is at present a school of painting

which, in order to make us admire Pompeii, adopts a style more _rococo_

than that of Girodet. I believe, then, that one must love nothing, that

is, we should preserve the strictest impartiality towards all

objectives.

Why do you persist in irritating my nerves by saying that a field of

cabbages is more beautiful than a desert? Permit me first to beg that

you will go and look at the desert before talking about it! And even if

there is anything as beautiful, go there just the same. But in your

expression of a preference for the _bourgeois_ vegetable, I see only an

attempt to enrage me, which has been quite successful.

You will not have from me any criticism written on _l'Été_ because,

first, it would take too much of my time; and second, I might say things

that would vex you. Yes, I am afraid of compromising myself, for I am

not sure of anything, and that which displeased me might, after all, be

the best thing I could have said. I shall wait for your brutal and

unwavering opinion regarding _l'Automne_. _Le Printemps_ pleased and

entranced me, without any restrictions. As to _l'Été_, I have made a

few.

Now,--but I must stop, because my observations may be directed against

an affair that is already settled, which perhaps is a good thing--I do

not know. And as there is nothing in the world more tiresome or stupid

than an unjust criticism, I will withhold mine, although it might have

been good. So that is all, my dear old boy! You accused me in your mind

of a cowardly action. This time you have reason to call me cowardly, but

the cowardice is only that of prudence.

Are you amusing yourself? Do you employ your preservatives, impure man?

What a wicked fellow is my friend Feydeau, and how I envy him! As for

me, I worry myself immeasurably. I feel old, tired, withered. I am as

sombre as a tomb and as crabbed as a hedgehog.

I have just read Cohan's book from one end to the other. I know that it

is very faithful, very good, very wise, but I prefer the old _Vulgate_,

because of the Latin. How swelling it is, compared with this poor, puny,

pulmonic little Frenchman! I will show you two or three mistranslations

(or rather, embellishments) in the said _Vulgate_, which have more

beauty than the real meaning.

Go on and amuse yourself, and pray to Apollo to inspire me, for I am

sadly flattened out.

Thine ever.

TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.

CROISSET, _Sunday evening, 1858_.

WHAT has become of you? As for myself, I have passed nearly four days in

sleeping, because of extreme fatigue; then I wrote my notes of travel,

and my lord Bouilhet has come to visit me.

During the week that he has been here we have been digging ferociously.

I must tell you that the story of Carthage is to be completely changed,

or rather, to be written over again, as I have destroyed the whole of

the original! It was absurd, impossible, false!

I believe now that I have struck the right note at last. I begin to

comprehend my personages, and already feel a great interest in them. I

do not know when I shall finish this colossal work. Perhaps not before

two or three years. From now on, I shall beg everyone that meets me not

to talk to me. I should like to send out notes announcing my death!

My course of action is planned. For me, the public, outside impressions,

and time, exist no more. To work!

I have re-read _Fanny_, at a single sitting, although I already knew it

by heart. My impression has not changed, but the whole effect seems to

be more rapid in movement, which is good. Do not disturb yourself about

anything, nor think any more about this. When you come here next, I

shall allow myself to point out to you two or three insignificant

details.

About the middle of next week, _Montarcy_ is to be played. Then, at the

beginning of next month, Bouilhet will return to Mantes, and my mother

will go to Trouville for a little visit of about a week. After that, my

dear sir, we shall expect you.

Will that be convenient and agreeable? Why have you not sent me any news

of yourself, you rascal? What are you writing? What are you doing? How

about Houssaye? etc.

As for myself, I take a river bath every day. I swim like a triton. My

health never has been better. My spirits are good, and I am full of

hope. When one is in good health he should store up a reserve of

courage, in order to meet disappointments in the future. They will come,

alas!

I believe that in the Rue Richer there is a photographer who sells views

of Algiers. If you could find me a view of Medragen (the tomb of the

Numidian kings), near Algiers, and send it to me, I should be very

grateful.

TO JULES DUPLAN.

1858.

I HAVE arrived, in my first chapter, at the description of my little

woman. I am polishing up her costume--a task that pleases me. It has set

me up not a little. I spread myself out, like a pig, on the stones by

which I am surrounded; I think that the words "purple" or "diamond" are

in every phrase in the chapter. And gold lace!--but I must not say any

more about it.

I shall certainly have finished my first chapter by the time you see me

again (that will not be before December), and perhaps I shall have

advanced considerably with the second, although it will be impossible to

write it in haste. This book [_Salammbô_] is above all things a grouping

of effects. My processes in beginning this romance are not good, but it

is necessary to make the surroundings _seem real_ at the very outset.

After that there will be enough of details and ornament to give the

thing a natural and simple effect.

Young Bouilhet has begun his fourth act.

Have you had a good laugh at the fast ordered by Her Majesty Queen

Victoria?

I think it is one of the most magisterial pieces of absurdity that I

ever have known; it is amazing! O Rabelais, where is thy vast mouth?

TO MADEMOISELLE LEROYER DE CHANTEPIE.

_December 26, 1858._

YOU may think that I have forgotten you, but I have done nothing of the

kind! My thoughts are often turned towards you, and I address myself to

the "unknown God," of whom St. Paul speaks, in prayers for the comfort

and satisfaction of your spirit. You hold in my heart a very high and

pure place; you would hardly believe me if I should tell you what a

marvellous depth of sentiment your first letters touched in me. I must

tell you of all that I feel, at some better time than this. We must meet

soon, to clasp each other's hands, that I may press a kiss upon your

brow!

This is what has happened since I wrote my last letter:

I was in Paris for ten days, where I assisted and co-operated in the

last performances of _Hélène Peyron_. This is a very beautiful play, and

it is also a great success. Making calls, reading the journals, etc.,

kept me very busy, and I returned here worn out, as usual, and as to the

moral effect, I was disgusted with all that uproar. I fell upon my

_Salammbô_ again with fury.

My mother has gone to Paris, and for a month I have been entirely alone.

I have begun my third chapter, and the story is to have twelve. You can

judge how much remains for me to do. I have thrown the preface into the

fire, although I worked two months on it this summer. But I am just

beginning, _at last_, to feel entertained by my own work. Every day I

rise at noon, and I retire at four o'clock in the morning. A white bear

is not more solitary and a god is not more calm. It was time! I think of

nothing but Carthage, and it is necessary that I should. To write a book

has always meant to me the necessity of imagining myself to be actually

living in the place described. This will explain my hesitations, my

distress of mind, and my slowness.

I shall not return to Paris until the last of February. Between now and

that time you will see in the _Revue Contemporaine_ a romance by my

friend Feydeau, which is dedicated to me, and which I hope you will

read.

Do you keep yourself informed as to the works of Renan? They would

interest you, and so would the new book by Flourens, on the _Siège de

l'âme_.

Can you guess what occupies me at present? The maladies of serpents

(always for my Carthage book)! I am about to write to Tunis to-day on

this subject. When one wishes to be absolutely accurate in such writing,

it costs something! All this may seem rather puerile, or even foolish.

But what is the use of living if one may not indulge in dreams?

Adieu! A thousand embraces. Write to me as often as you wish, and as

freely as you can.

TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.

CROISSET, _Thursday_.

I HAVE not forgotten you at all, my dear old boy, but I am working like

thirty niggers! I have finally finished my interminable fourth chapter

from which I have stricken out that which I liked best. Then, I have

made the plan of the fifth, written a quantity of notes, etc. The summer

has not begun badly. I believe that the work will go smoothly now, but

perhaps I delude myself. What a book! Heavens! It is difficult!

Yes, I find, contrary to D'Aurevilly, that there is now a question of

hypocrisy and nothing else. I am alarmed, amazed, scandalised at the

transcendent poltroonery that possesses the human race. Everyone fears

"being compromised." This is something new,--at least, to such a degree

as appears. The desire for success, the necessity, even, of succeeding,

_because of the profit to be made_, has so greatly demoralised

literature that one becomes stupid through timidity. The idea of failure

or of incurring censure makes the timid writer shake in his shoes.

"That's all very well for you to say, you, who collect your rents," I

think I hear you remark. A very clever response, the inference of which

is that morality is to be relegated to a place among objects of luxury!

The time is no more when writers were dragged to the Bastille. It might

be rebuilt, but no one could be found to put in it.

All this will not be lost. The deeper I plunge into antiquity, the more

I feel the necessity of reforming modern times, and I am ready to roast

a number of worthy citizens!

Do not think any more about _Daniel_. It is finished. It will be read,

be sure of that.

When you come to Croisset, before setting out for Luchon (about the

beginning of July, I suppose), bring me the detailed plan of

_Catherine_. I have several ideas on your style in general and on your

future book in particular.

You are a rascal! You compromise my name in public places! I shall

attack you in a court of justice for a theft of titles.

I have two pretty neighbours who have read _Daniel_, twice running. And

the coachmen of Rouen fall off their seats while reading _Fanny_

(historic)!

_À propos_ of morality, have you read that the inhabitants of Glasgow

have petitioned Parliament to suppress the models of nude women in the

schools of drawing?

Adieu, old boy; dig hard!

What news of your wife? Why is she at Versailles? It is an atrocious

place, colder than Siberia.

TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.

CROISSET, _May, 1860_.

I MUST tell you of the pleasure I had in reading your two books. I found

them charming, full of new details and having an excellent style,

showing at the same time nervous power and lofty imagination. That is

history, it seems to me, and original history.

One sees in them always the soul within the body; the abundance of

details does not stifle the psychological side. The moral is revealed

beneath the facts, without declamation or digression. It _lives_,--a

rare merit.

The portrait of Louis XV., that of Bachelier, and above all, that of

Richelieu, seem to me to be products of the most finished art.

How much you make me love Madame de Mailly! She actually excites me!

"She was one of those beauties ... like the divinities of a bacchante!"

Heavens! You certainly write like angels!

I know of nothing in the world that has interested me more than the

finale of _Madame de Châteauroux_.

Your judgment of the Pompadour will rest without appeal, I fancy. What

could anyone say after you?

That poor Du Barry! How you love her, do you not? I love her, too, I

must confess. How fortunate you are, to be able to occupy yourselves

with all that sort of thing, instead of diving into nothingness, or

working upon nothingness, as I must work.

It is altogether charming of you to send me the book, to have so much

talent, and to love me a little!

I clasp your four hands as warmly as possible, and am ever your

G. FLAUBERT,

Friend of Franklin and of Marat; factionist, and anarchist

_of the first order_, and for twenty years a disorganiser

of despotism on two hemispheres!!!

TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.

CROISSET, _July 3, 1860_.

SINCE you appear to be interested in my _Carthage_, this is what I have

to tell you about it:

I believe that my eyes have been larger than my belly! To present the

_reality_ is almost impossible with such a subject. One's only resource

is to make the thing poetic, but there is danger of falling into the way

of employing the old, well-known tricks of speech that have been used

from _Télémaque_ to the _Martyrs_.

I say nothing of the archæological researches, the labour of gathering

which must not be evident, nor of the language and the form, which are

almost impossible to handle. If I tried to write with absolute accuracy

of detail, the work would be obscure; I should be compelled to use

abstruse terms, and to stuff the volumes with notes. And if I should

preserve the usual French literary tone, the work would become simply

banal. Problem! as Father Hugo would say.

In spite of all that, I continue, but I am devoured by anxiety and

doubts. I console myself with the thought that at least I have attempted

to do something worth while. That is all.

The standard of the Doctrine will be boldly carried this time, I assure

you! But it proves nothing, it says nothing, it is neither historic, nor

satirical, nor humorous. On the other hand, is it not stupid?

I have just begun Chapter VIII., after which seven still remain to be

written. I shall not finish the work before eighteen months have passed.

It was not a mere bit of politeness on my part when I congratulated you

on your work. I love history madly! The dead are far more agreeable to

me than the living. Whence comes this seduction of the past? Why have

you made me fall in love with the mistresses of Louis XV.? A love like

this is, now I think of it, a decided novelty in human emotion. The

historic sense dates from yesterday, and it is perhaps the best

characteristic of the nineteenth century.

What are you doing now? As for myself, I am deep in Kabbala, in Mischna,

in the military tactics of the ancients, etc. (a mass of reading that is

of no particular use to me, but which I undertook through the urgency of

my conscience, and also a little to amuse myself). I worry myself over

the assonances that I find in my prose; my life is as flat as the table

upon which I write. The days follow one another, each one appearing to

be exactly like the preceding, externally, at least. In my despair, I

sometimes dream of travel. Sad remedy!

Both of you seem to me to have the air of stultifying yourselves

virtuously in the bosom of your family, among the delights of the

country! I comprehend that sort of thing, having undergone it several

times.

Shall you be in Paris from the first of August to the 25th?

While waiting for the joy of seeing you, I clasp your hands with true

affection.

TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.

CROISSET, _Sunday, July 20, 1860_.

I REPLY immediately to your pretty letter, received this morning, to

congratulate you, my dear sir, on the life you lead! Accept the homage

of my envy.

Since you ask me about _Salammbô_, this is how it stands. I have just

finished the ninth chapter, and am preparing the material for the tenth

and eleventh, which I intend to write this winter, living here all

alone, like a bear.

I am occupied now with a quantity of reading, which I get through with

great rapidity. For the last three days I have done nothing but swallow

Latin, following, at the same time, my studies of the early Christians.

As to the Carthaginians, I really believe I have exhausted all texts on

the subject. After my romance is finished, it would be easy for me to

write a large volume of criticisms of these books, with strong

citations. For instance, no longer ago than to-day, a passage in Cicero

led me to discover a form of Tanith of which I had had no previous

knowledge.

I become wise--and sad! Yes, I now lead a holy existence--I, who was

born with so many appetites! But sacred literature has become a part of

my very being.

I pass my time in putting stones on the pit of my stomach, to prevent

the feeling of hunger! This makes me fairly stupid at times.

As to my "copy" (since that is the term), frankly, I do not know what to

think. I fear I may fall into the way of making continual repetitions,

of eternally rehashing the same things. Sometimes my phrases seem to be

all cut after the same fashion, and likely to bore anyone to death. My

will does not weaken, but I find it very difficult to please myself. I

feel like _eating_ my own words.

You may judge of my agitation just now, when I tell you that I am

actually preparing a grand _coup_, the finest effect in the book. It

must be at once brutal and chaste, mystical yet realistic,--a kind of

effect that never has been produced before, yet absolutely real and

convincing.

That which I predicted has come true; you are enamoured of Arabian

manners and morals! How much time you will lose, after you return,

dreaming, beside the fire, of dark eyes beneath a cloudless sky!

Send me a line as soon as you return to Paris. You said you expected to

arrive by the end of the month. That time is now here. We must not let

any longer time elapse without seeing each other. Bouilhet's play will

have its first performance about the 15th or the 20th of November.

My mother and my niece are well, and thank you for your kind

remembrance. As to my niece, I believe I shall be made a great-uncle

next April. I am becoming a veteran, a sheikh, an old man, an idiot!

May you enjoy the last days of your journey and have a good voyage home.

I embrace thee!

TO MADEMOISELLE LEROYER DE CHANTEPIE.

CROISSET, _September 8, 1860_.

I RECEIVED on Tuesday morning your letter of the first of September. It

saddened me to read the expression of your grief. Besides your private

sorrow, you are surrounded by exterior annoyances, as I understand,

since you are forced to perceive the ingratitude and selfishness of

those who are under obligations to you. I must tell you that such is

_always_ the case,--a very poor consolation, it is true! But the

conviction that rain is wet and that a rattlesnake is dangerous has its

share in helping us to support our miseries. Why is this so? But here we

attempt to encroach upon the omniscience of God!

Let us try to forget evil, and turn to the sunshine and the good we may

find in life. If a malicious person wounds you, try to remember the

kindness of some noble heart, and fill your mind with that recollection.

You tell me that you find absolutely no sympathy of ideas. That is one

reason why you should live in Paris. One always finds there some person

to whom one can talk. You were not made for provincial life. I am

convinced that among other surroundings you would have suffered less.

Each soul has its own atmosphere. You must suffer keenly, in the midst

of the folly, lies, calumnies, jealousies, and indescribable pettiness

which are almost the inevitable accompaniment of _bourgeois_ life in

small towns. Of course, that sort of thing exists in Paris also, but in

another form--less direct and less irritating.

There is still time to form a good resolution. Do not continue to live

"on foot" as you have lived heretofore. Tear yourself away! Travel! Do

you think you may die on the way? Ah, well, never mind! No, no, believe

me when I tell you that you would be better for it, physically and

morally. But you need a master, who would order you to go, and force you

to it! I know you as well as if I had lived with you twenty years. Is

this presumption on my part,--an excessive sympathy that I feel for you?

I assure you that I am very fond of you, and that I wish you to know, if

not happiness, at least tranquillity. But it is not possible to enjoy

the least serenity with your habit of delving incessantly among the

greatest mysteries. You kill both your body and your soul in trying to

conciliate two contradictory things: religion and philosophy. The

liberalism of your mind revolts against the old rubbish of dogma, and

your natural mysticism takes alarm at the extreme consequences whither

your reason leads you. Try to confine yourself to science, to pure

science; learn to love facts for themselves. Study ideas as naturalists

study insects. Such contemplation may be full of tenderness. The breasts

of the Muses are full of milk; and that liquid is the beverage of the

strong. And--once more--leave the place where your soul is stifling. Go

at once, instantly, as if the house were afire!

Think of me sometimes, and believe always in my sincere affection.

TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.

1861.

YOU must have found a letter from me at your house in Paris, as I wrote

to you the same day I received your book (last Monday), after reading it

from one end to the other without hastening.

I was enchanted with it! It has an upspringing power that never flags

for an instant. As to the analysis, it is perfect--it fairly dazzles me.

In my former letter you will find my impression given immediately after

the first reading. I should now be reading it a second time, if my

mother had not three ladies under her roof, who are regaling themselves

with it! It will certainly appeal to the fair sex, and therefore will be

a success--I believe that is the general idea. But I have found

opportunities to dip into your _Philomène_ here and there, and I know

the book perfectly. My opinion is this: You have done that which you

wished to do, and have done it with great success.

Do not have any anxiety about it. Your _réligieuse_ is not banal, thanks

to the explanation at the beginning. That was the danger, but you have

avoided it.

But that which lends the book its simplicity has perhaps restricted its

breadth a little. Beside Sister Philoméne I should have wished to see

contrasted the generality of _réligieuses_, who scarcely resemble her.

And that is the only objection I have to make. It is true that you have

not entitled your book: _Morals of a Hospital!_ This may be the cause of

some criticism.

I cannot find words to tell you how pleased I am with your work. I

notice a new effect of realism in it,--the power to describe the natural

connection of facts. Your method of doing this is excellent. Perhaps the

strongest interest of the work springs from this.

What an imbecile was Levy! But he is very amusing, all the same.

No, there are not too many "horrors" (for my personal taste, there are

not even enough!--but that is a question of temperament). You stopped

just at the very limit. There are exquisite traits,--the old man who

coughs, for instance, and the head surgeon among his pupils, etc. The

conclusion is superb--I mean the death of Barnier.

It was necessary, perhaps, for you to make your romance in six volumes,

but it must have been a wearisome piece of work. They say it is

impossible to please everyone; but I am convinced that your _Sister

Philoméne_ will have a great success, and shall not be at all surprised

at it.

I have said nothing about your style, for it has been a long time since

I first congratulated you upon that!

Romaine excites my admiration beyond bounds. "Ah! To touch, as you

touched, to cut, as you cut there yourself." Here a true and deep note

is sounded.

I am as proud of you as I am displeased with myself. Alas! My good

friends, things do not go well. It seems to me that _Salammbô_ is

stupid enough to kill one! There is too much talk of the unsettled

conditions of ancient times, always battles, always furious people. One

longs for cradling verdure and a milk diet! Berquin would seem delicious

after this. In short, I am not contented. I believe my plan is bad, but

it is too late to change it, because everything now is fully settled.

What do you intend to do next? How goes _La Jeune Bourgeoise_? Write to

me when you have nothing better to do, for I think of you very often.

Adieu! A thousand thanks, and a thousand sincere compliments! I embrace

you.

TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.

1861.

WHAT a man was old Father Hugo! Heavens! what a poet! I have just

devoured his two volumes. I need you! I need Bouilhet! I need some

intelligent auditor! I want to bawl three thousand verses as no one else

ever has bawled them! Did I say bawl?--I meant _howl_! I do not

recognize myself--I do not know what possesses me! Ah! that has done me

good!

I have found three superb details which are not at all historic and

which are in my _Salammbô_. I must cut them out, else some one would be

sure to accuse me of plagiarism. It is the poor that are always charged

with stealing!

My work is progressing rather better. I am now engrossed in a battle of

elephants, and I assure you that I kill men off like flies! I pour

blood in torrents!

I wished to write you a long letter, my poor old boy, about the

annoyances you suffer, which seem to me rather serious, but frankly, it

is time I went to bed. It will soon be four o'clock in the morning.

Father Hugo has turned my brain topsy-turvy!

I, too, have had for some time annoyances and anxieties that are not

slight. But--_Allah Kherim!_

You appear to me to be in good condition. You are right. As your book

will not be about Belgium (the scene, I mean), it will have a freer

colour and unity. But think seriously after that of your proposed work

on the Bourse, of which there is a crying need.

TO MADAME ROGER DES GENETTES.

1861.

A GOOD subject for a romance is one that is embodied in one idea,

springing up like a single jet of water. It is the "mother idea," whence

come all that follow. One is by no means free to write of such or such a

thing; he does not _choose_ his subject. This is something that the

public and the critics do not comprehend, but the secret of all

masterpieces lies in the concordance between the subject and the

temperament of the author.

You are right; we must speak with respect of _Lucrece_; I can compare it

only to Byron, and Byron had not his gravity, nor his sincerity, nor his

sadness. The melancholy of the olden time seems to me more profound

than that of our day, which implies, more or less, the idea of

immortality beyond the grave. But to the ancients the grave was

infinity; their dreams were conceived and enacted against a black and

unchangeable background. No cries, no convulsions, nothing but the

fixity of a thoughtful visage! The gods no longer existed, and the

Christ had not yet come; and the ancients, from Cicero to Marcus

Aurelius, lived at a unique epoch when man alone was all-powerful. I do

not find anything like such grandeur as this; but that which renders

_Lucrece_ intolerable is its philosophy, which the author presents as

positive. It is because he does not suspect that it is weak; he wishes

to explain, to conclude! If he had resembled Epicurus only in mind and

not in system, all parts of his work would have been immortal and

radical. No matter! Our modern poets are weak and puny compared with

such a man!

TO MADAME ROGER DES GENETTES.

CROISSET, 1862.

TO YOU I can say everything! Well, our god has come down a peg! _Les

Misérables_ exasperates me, yet one cannot say a word against it, for

fear of being thought a _mouchard_! The position of the author is

impregnable, unassailable. I, who have passed my life in adoring him, am

actually indignant at him at present, and must burst out somehow!

I find in this book neither verity nor grandeur. As to style, it seems

to me intentionally incorrect and low, as if the story had been written

thus to flatter the popular taste. Hugo has a good word and kindly

attention for everyone: Saint Simonians, Philippists, even for

innkeepers,--all receive equal adulation, and the types are like those

found only in tragedies. Where are there any prostitutes like Fantine,

convicts like Valjean, and politicians like the stupid donkeys of the A,

B, C? Nowhere do we find the real suffering of the _soul_. These are

only manikins, sugar dolls, beginning with Monseigneur Bienvenu. In a

rage of socialism, Hugo calumniates the Church as he calumniates misery.

Where is the bishop who asks a benediction from a convention? Where is

the factory that turns away a girl because she has a child? And the

digressions! How many of these do we find! The passage about manure

should interest Pelletan!

This book was written for the low socialist class and for the

philosophical-evangelical vermin. What a pretty character is Monsieur

Marius, living for three days on a cutlet, and Monsieur Enjolras, who

never had given but two kisses in his life, poor fellow!

As to the conversations, they are good, but they are all alike. The

eternal repetitions of Père Gillenormant, the final delirium of Valjean,

the humour of Cholomiès and of Gantaise--it is all in the same strain.

Always a straining after effects, attempts at jokes, an effort at

gaiety, but nothing really comic. There are lengthy explanations of

things quite outside the subject, and a lack of details that should be

indispensable. Then there are long sermons, saying that universal

suffrage would be a very fine thing, and that it is necessary to

instruct the masses,--all of which is repeated to satiety.

Decidedly, this book, in spite of some beautiful passages, is childish.

Personal observation is a secondary quality in literature, but one

should not allow himself to paint society so falsely when he is the

contemporary of Balzac and of Dickens. It was a splendid subject, but

what calm philosophy it demanded in its treatment, and what breadth of

scientific vision! It is true that Father Hugo disdains science,--and he

proves it!

In my mind this confirms Descartes or Spinoza.

Posterity will not pardon him for attempting to be a thinker, in spite

of his nature. Where has the rage for philosophic prose conducted him?

And what kind of philosophy? That of Prudhomme, of the Bonhomme Richard,

or of Béranger. He is no more of a thinker than Racine, or La Fontaine,

whom he considers mediocre; that is, in this book he flows with the

current, even as they; he gathers all the banal ideas of his epoch, and

with such persistence that he forgets his work and his art.

This is my opinion; I keep it to myself, you understand. Anyone that

handles a pen must feel too much gratitude towards Hugo to permit

himself to criticise him; but I find that externally, at least, even the

gods grow old!

I await your reply--and your anger!

TO THEOPHILE GAUTIER.

1863.

WHAT a charming article, my dear Théo, and how can I thank you for it?

If anyone had said to me, when I was twenty years old, that Théophile

Gautier, with whom my imagination was filled, would write such things

about me, I should have become delirious with pride!

Have you read the third philippic of Sainte-Beuve? But your panegyric of

Trajan avenges me.

May I expect you the day after to-morrow? Tell Toto to give me an answer

regarding this.

Your old friend.

TO THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.

_Monday evening, 1863._

MY OLD THÉO: Do not come Wednesday. I am invited to dine with the

Princess Mathilde that evening, and we should not have time for a chat

before dinner. Let us put it off until Saturday. Ducamp has been

notified.

My reply to my lord Froehner will appear in _l'Opinion_ next Saturday,

or perhaps Thursday. I believe that you will not be displeased with the

phrase that alludes to you.

Is it understood, then--Saturday?

TO THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.

CROISSET, _April 3, 1864_.

HOW goes it, dear old master? How comes on the _Fracasse_? What do you

think of _Salammbô_? Is there anything new to say about that young

person? The _Figaro-Programme_ has mentioned it again, and Verdi is in

Paris.

As soon as you have finished your romance, come to my cabin and stay a

week (or more) according to your promise, and we will lay out the

scenario. I shall expect you in May. Let me know two days in advance

before you come.

I am dreaming of writing two books, without having done any actual work

upon them. I have nails in my throat--if I may so express myself.

It seems to me a very long time since I have seen your dear face.

I imagine that we shall enjoy here (far from courts and women) a great

gossip. So run hither as soon as you are free! I kiss you on both

cheeks.

Tenderest remembrances to all, especially to Toto.

I am a victim of the HHHHHATRED OF THE PRIESTS, having been cursed by

them in two churches--Sainte-Clotilde and Trinity!! They accuse me of

being the inventor of obscene travesties, and of wishing to restore

paganism!

TO GEORGE SAND.

1866.

DEAR MADAME: I cannot tell you how much pleased I am that you fulfilled

what you called a duty. The kindness of your heart has touched me and

your sympathy has made me proud. That is all.

Your letter, which I have just received, adds to your article and even

surpasses it, and I do not know what to say to you unless I say frankly

that I love you for it!

It was not I that sent you a little flower in an envelope last

September. But it is a strange coincidence that I received at the same

time, sent in the same fashion, a leaf plucked from a tree.

As to your cordial invitation, I reply neither yes nor no, like a true

Norman. I shall surprise you, perhaps, some day this summer. I have a

great desire to see you and to talk with you.

It would be very sweet to me to have your portrait to hang upon my study

wall in the country, where I often pass long months entirely alone. Is

my request indiscreet? If not, I send you a thousand thanks in advance.

Take them in addition to my others, which I reiterate.

TO GEORGE SAND.

PARIS, 1866.

MOST certainly I count upon your visit at my private domicile. As for

the inconveniences dreaded by the fair sex, you will not perceive more

of them than have others (be sure of that). My little stories of the

heart and of the sense do not come out of a back shop. But as it is a

long distance from my home to yours, in order to save you a useless

journey, let me meet you as soon as you arrive in Paris, and we will

dine together all by ourselves with our elbows on the table!

I have sent Bouilhet your kind message.

At the present moment I am deafened by the crowd in the street under my

window following the prize ox! And they say that intellect flourishes

among the people of the street!

TO GEORGE SAND.

CROISSET, _Tuesday, 1866_.

YOU are alone and sad where you are, and I am the same here. Whence come

the black moods that sometimes sweep over us? They creep up like the

rising tide and we are suddenly overwhelmed and must flee. My method is

to lie flat on my back and do nothing, and the wave passes after a time.

My romance has been going badly for a quarter of an hour. Then, too, I

have just heard of two deaths, that of Cormenin, a friend for the past

twenty-five years, and of Gavarni. Other things have troubled me, too,

but all this will soon pass over.

You do not know what it is to sit a whole day with your head in your

hands, squeezing your unhappy brain in trying to find a word. Your ideas

flow freely, incessantly, like a river. But with me they run slowly,

like a tiny rill. I must have great works of art to occupy me in order

to obtain a cascade. Ah! I know what they are--the terrors of _style_!

In short, I pass my life gnawing my heart and my brain--that is the real

truth about your friend.

You ask whether he thinks sometimes of his old troubadour of the clock.

He does, indeed! And he regrets him. Our little nocturnal chats were

very charming. There were moments when I had to restrain myself to keep

from babbling to you like a big baby.

Your ears must have burned last night. I dined with my brother and his

family. We spoke of scarcely anyone but you, and everyone sang your

praises, dear and well-beloved master!

I re-read, _à propos_ of your last letter (and by a natural train of

ideas), Father Montaigne's chapter entitled "Some Verses of Virgil."

That which he says about chastity is precisely my own belief.

It is the effort that is difficult, and not abstinence in itself.

Otherwise, it would be a curse to the flesh. Heaven knows whither this

would lead. So, at the risk of eternal reiteration, and of being like

Prudhomme, I repeat that your young man was wrong. If he had been

virtuous up to twenty years of age, his action would be an ignoble

libertinage at fifty. Everyone gets his deserts some time! Great

natures, that are also good, are above all things generous, and do not

calculate expense. We must laugh and weep, work, play, and suffer, so

that we may feel the divine vibration throughout our being. That, I

believe, is the characteristic of true manhood.

TO GEORGE SAND.

CROISSET, _Saturday night, 1866_.

AT LAST I have it, that beautiful, dear, and illustrious face! I shall

put it in a large frame and hang it on my wall, being able to say, as M.

de Talleyrand said to Louis Philippe: "It is the greatest honour my

house ever has received." Not quite appropriate, for you and I are

better than those two worthies!

Of the two portraits, the one I like the better is the drawing by

Couture. As to Marchal's conception, he has seen in you only "the good

woman"; but I, who am an old romanticist, find in it "the head of the

author" who gave me in my youth so many beautiful dreams!

TO GEORGE SAND.

CROISSET, 1866.

I, A MYSTERIOUS being, dear master? What an idea! I find myself a

walking platitude, and am sometimes bored to death by the _bourgeois_ I

carry about under my skin! Sainte-Beuve, between you and me, does not

know me at all, whatever he may say. I even swear to you (by the sweet

smile of your grand-daughter!) that I know few men less "vicious" than

myself. I have dreamed much, but have done little. That which is

deceptive to superficial observers is the discord between my sentiments

and my ideas. If you wish to have my confession, I will give it frankly.

My sense of the grotesque has always restrained me from yielding to any

inclination towards licentiousness. I maintain that cynicism protects

chastity. We must discuss this matter at length (that is, if you choose)

the next time we meet.

This is the programme that I propose to you. During the next month my

house will be in some disorder. But towards the end of October, or at

the beginning of November (after the production of Bouilhet's play), I

hope nothing will prevent you from returning here with me, not for a

day, as you say, but for a week at least. You shall have your room "with

a round table and everything needful for writing." Is that agreeable?

About the fairy play [_The Castle of Hearts_] I thank you for your

kindly offer of assistance. I will tell you all about the thing (I am

writing it in collaboration with Bouilhet). But I believe it is a mere

trifle, and I am divided between the desire to gain a few piastres and

shame at the idea of exhibiting such a piece of frivolity.

I find you a little severe towards Brittany, but not towards the Bretons

themselves, who appear to me a crabbed set of animals.

_À propos_ of Celtic archæology, I published, in _l'Artiste_, in 1858, a

marvellous tale about the rocking stones, but I have not a copy of the

number, and do not even remember in which month it appeared.

I have read, continuously, the ten volumes of _l'Histoire de Ma Vie_, of

which I knew about two thirds, in fragments. That which struck me most

forcibly was the account of life in the convent.

On all these matters I have stored up a quantity of observations to

submit to you when we meet.

TO GEORGE SAND.

CROISSET, _Saturday night, 1866_.

THE sending of the two portraits made me believe that you were in Paris,

dear master, and I wrote you a letter which now awaits you at the Rue

des Feuillantines.

I have not found my article on the dolmens. But I have the whole

manuscript about my trip through Brittany among my unedited works. We

shall have it to let our tongues loose upon while you are here. Take

courage!

I do not experience, as you do, that feeling as of the beginning of a

new life, the bewilderment of a fresh existence newly opening. On the

contrary, it seems to me that I have always existed, and I possess

recollections that go back to the time of the Pharaohs! I can see myself

at various epochs in history very clearly, following various

occupations, and placed in divers circumstances. The present individual

is the product of my past individualities. I have been a boatman on the

Nile; a _leno_ at Rome during the time of the Punic wars; then a Greek

rhetorician at Suburra, where I was devoured by bugs. I died, during the

crusades, from eating grapes on the coast of Syria. I have been a pirate

and a monk; a clown and a coachman. Perhaps, also, an emperor in the

Orient!

Many things would explain themselves if we could only know our true

genealogy. For, the elements that go to make a man being limited, the

same combinations must reproduce themselves.

We must regard this matter as we regard many others. Each of us takes

hold of it by only one end, and never fully understands it. The

psychological sciences remain where they have always lain, in folly and

in darkness. All the more so since they possess no exact nomenclature,

and we are compelled to employ the same expression to signify the most

diverse ideas. When we mix up the categories, good-bye to the _morale_!

Do you not find that, since '89, we struggle with trifles? Instead of

continuing along the broad road, which was as wide and beautiful as a

triumphal way, we run off into narrow paths, or struggle in the mire. It

might be wiser to return temporarily to d'Holbach. Before admiring

Prudhon, we should know Turgot!

But "Chic," that modern religion, what would become of that?

"Chic" (or "Chique") opinions: to support Catholicism, without believing

a word of it; to approve of slavery; to praise the House of Austria; to

wear mourning for Queen Amélie; to admire _Orphée aux Enfers_; to occupy

oneself with agriculture; to talk "sport;" to be cold; to be idiot

enough to regret the treaties of 1815. All this is the very newest

thing!

Ah! You believe because I pass my life in trying to make harmonious

phrases and to avoid assonances, that I do not form my own little

judgments on the affairs of this world. Alas! I do, and sometimes I boil

with rage at not being able to express them.

But enough of gossip, or I shall bore you.

Bouilhet's play will appear early in November. And we shall see each

other in about a month from that time.

I embrace you tenderly, dear master!

TO GEORGE SAND.

_Monday night, 1866._

YOU are sad, my poor friend and dear master; I thought of you at once on

learning of the death of Duveyrier. Since you loved him, I pity you.

This loss is one of many. These deaths we feel in the depths of our

hearts. Each of us carries within himself his own burial ground.

I am all _unscrewed_ since your departure; it seems to me now as if ten

years have passed since last I saw you. My only topic of conversation

with my mother is yourself; we all cherish the thought of you here.

Under what constellation were you born, to have united in your person

qualities so diverse, so numerous, and so rare? I hardly know how to

characterise the sentiment I feel for you, but I bear you a _particular_

tenderness, such as I never have felt for anyone else. We understand

each other well, do we not? And that is charming!

I regretted you especially last night at ten o'clock. There was a fire

on my wood-merchant's premises. The sky was rosy, and the Seine was the

colour of gooseberry sirup. I worked at the pumps for three hours, and

came home as weak as the Turk of the giraffe.

A journal of Rouen, the _Nouvelliste_, has mentioned your visit at

Rouen, and in such terms that on Saturday, after you had gone, I met

several worthy _bourgeois_ who were indignant at me because I had not

exhibited you! The most absurd remark was made by an old

sub-prefect:--"Ah! if we had only known that she was here ... we should

have ... we should have" ... pause of five minutes, while he searched

for a word--"we should have ... _smiled_!" That would have been a great

compliment, eh?

To love you "more" is difficult, but I embrace you tenderly. Your letter

of this morning, so melancholy, has touched the depths of my heart. We

are separated just at the time when we wish to say so many things. Not

all doors have yet been opened between you and me. You inspire me with a

deep respect, and I dare not question you.

TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.

_Friday, one o'clock, 1867._

MY DEAR OLD BOYS! On arriving at Paris, the day before yesterday, I

learned of your nomination through Scholl's article. So my pleasure was

mingled with annoyance.

Then, last evening, the princess told me you were in Paris. If you were

in the habit of opening your door to the people that knock at it, I

should have presented myself at midnight, to embrace you.

How shall we meet?--for I must return this evening. It is not you,

Edmond, I wish to compliment so much as Jules, to whom the nomination

must give more pleasure than it gives to you. The fifteenth of next

August will be the date for your turn, I suppose.

Adieu, dear old fellows, I embrace you both most tenderly.

I wrote to you at Trouville, _poste restante_. Have you received my

letter?

P.S.--A sudden thought seizes me. What do you intend to do this evening?

Where shall you be at five minutes before midnight? Is it not possible

that I might dine with you? Where shall we see each other?

You know that this is worn as soon as the news is printed in the

_Moniteur_. So here is a little gift from your friend. Cut the ribbon

and wear it. Cut it in half, because there is enough for two.

TO GEORGE SAND.

_Wednesday night, 1867._

I HAVE followed your advice, dear master, and I have taken exercise!

Am I not good, eh?

Sunday evening, at eleven o'clock, there was such beautiful moonlight on

the river and across the snow, that I was seized with a wild desire to

go out and bestir myself; so I walked for two hours and a half, showing

the scenery to myself, and imagining I was travelling in Russia or in

Norway! When the waves rose and cracked the ice along the edges of the

river, it was, without joking, really superb. Then I thought of you, and

longed for your companionship.

I do not like to eat alone. I find it necessary to associate the idea of

some one to the things that give me pleasure. But the right "someone"

is extremely rare. I ask myself why I love you. Is it because you are a

great "man" or simply a charming being? I do not know. The one thing I

am sure of is that I feel for you a particular sentiment which I cannot

define.

_A propos_ of this, do you believe (you, who are a master in psychology)

that one ever loves two persons in the same way, or that one ever

experiences two identical sensations? I do not believe it, as I maintain

that the individual changes every moment of his existence.

You write me such pretty things regarding "disinterested affection."

They are very true, but the contrary also is true. We always imagine God

in our own image. At the foundation of all our loves and all our

admirations we find--ourselves, or something resembling ourselves. But

what matters it?--if we are admirable!

My own _ego_ overwhelms me for a quarter of an hour. How heavily that

rascal weighs upon me at times. He writes too slowly, and does not

_pose_ the least in the world when he complains about his work. What a

task! And what devil possessed him to induce him to seek such a subject?

You ought to give me a recipe for writing faster; yet you complain of

having to seek fortune! You!

I have had a little note from Sainte-Beuve, reassuring me as to his

health, but rather sad in tone. He seems to be very sorry not to be able

to haunt the woods of Cyprus. He is right, after all, or at least, it

seems right to him, which amounts to the same thing. Perhaps I shall

resemble him when I reach his age, but somehow, I believe not. As I had

not the same kind of youth, my old age will probably be different.

This reminds me that I have sometimes dreamed of writing a book on Saint

Périne. Champfleury has treated this subject very badly. I see nothing

whatever in it of a comical nature; I should bring out its painful and

lamentable character. I believe that the heart never grows old; there

are people in whom it even grows stronger with age. I was drier and

harsher at twenty than I am to-day. I have become softened and feminised

by wear and tear, while others have hardened and withered, and that

almost makes me indignant. I feel that I am becoming a _cow_! A mere

nothing stirs my emotions; everything troubles and agitates me and

shakes me as a reed is shaken in the north wind.

One word of yours, which I have just recollected, made me wish to

re-read _The Fair Maid of Perth_. She was something of a coquette,

whatever they say of her. That good fellow had some imagination,

decidedly.

Now, adieu. Think of me! I send you my tenderest thoughts.

TO GEORGE SAND.

_Wednesday night, 1867._

DEAR MASTER, dear friend of the good God, "let us talk a little of

Dozenval," let us growl about Monsieur Thiers! Could there ever be a

more triumphant imbecile, a more abject fellow, a meaner _bourgeois_!

No, no words could ever give an idea of the nausea that overcomes me

when I contemplate that old pumpkin of a diplomat, fattening his

stupidity under the muck of the _bourgeoisie_. Would it be possible to

treat with more naïve and more inappropriate unceremoniousness, matters

of religion, the people, liberty, the past and the future, national

history and natural history, everything? He seems to me as eternal as

mediocrity itself! He prostrates me! But the finest thing of all is the

spectacle of the brave National Guards, whom he threw out in 1848, now

beginning to applaud him! What absolute lunacy! It proves that

everything depends upon temperament. Prostitutes--represented in this

case by France--are said to have always a weakness for old rascals!

I shall attempt, in the third part of my romance (when I shall have had

the reaction following the June days), to insinuate a panegyric about

him, _à propos_ of his book: _De la Propriété_, and I hope that he will

be pleased with me!

What care should one take sometimes, in expressing an opinion on things

of this world, not to risk being considered an imbecile later? It is a

rude problem. It seems to me that the best way is to describe, with the

simplest precision, those things that exasperate one. The dissection

itself is a vengeance!

Ah, well! it is not at him alone that I am enraged, nor at the

others--it is at our people in general.

However, if we had spent our time in instructing the higher classes on

the subject of agriculture; if we had thought more of our stomachs than

of our heads, probably we should resemble him!

I have just read the preface of Buchez to his _Histoire parlementaire_.

Like other similar publications, it is full of stupidities, of which we

feel the weight to this day.

It is not kind to say I do not think of my "old troubadour;" of what

else should I think? Of my little book, perhaps,--but that is more

difficult and not nearly so agreeable.

How long do you remain at Cannes? After Cannes, does not one usually

return to Paris? I shall be there towards the end of January.

In order that my book may be finished in the spring of 1869, from this

time on, I shall not allow myself even a week's holiday. This is the

reason why I do not go to Nohant. I am still on the history of the

amazons. In order to draw the bow with the best effect, they used to cut

off one breast! Was that a good way, after all?

Adieu, dear master; write to me. I embrace thee tenderly!

TO JULES MICHELET.

_Wednesday, 1868._

NO, MY dear master, I have not received your book, but I have already

read it, and am re-reading it. What a mountain is yours! Where will you

stop?

I am overwhelmed by this mass of ideas, and amazed at their profundity.

I believe I never have read anything that impressed me more deeply than

that part about the baths of Acqui. You bring the Pyrenees and the Alps

before our very eyes. But in your company one is always on the heights!

The weighty romance in which you express an interest (weighty for me,

while waiting to see what it will be for others!), will not be finished

in less than a whole year. I am full of it now, in the history of '48.

My profound conviction is that the clergy has acted amazingly.

The dangers of democratic Catholicism, pointed out by you in the preface

to your _Revolution_, are already here. Ah! we are indeed alone. But you

remain to us, you!

I clasp your hand warmly, and beg you to believe me yours, with true

affection.

TO GEORGE SAND.

CROISSET, _Wednesday evening, Sept. 9, 1868_.

IS THIS handsome conduct, dear master? Two months have passed since you

wrote last to your old troubadour! Are you in Paris, Nohant, or where?

They say that _Cadio_ is being rehearsed at the Porte Saint-Martin (are

you very sorry, you and Chilly?). They say also, that Thuillier will

make her reappearance in your play. (I thought she was dying--I mean

Thuillier, not your play.) And when will _Cadio_ be produced. Are you

pleased?

I live absolutely like an oyster. My romance is the rock to which I

cling, and I know nothing of what is going on in the world. I do not

even read, or rather, I read only the _Lanterne_. Rochefort bores me,

to tell the truth. One must, however, have considerable bravery to dare

to say, even timidly, that perhaps he is not the first writer of the

century! O _Velches! Velches!_ as Monsieur de Voltaire would sigh, or

rather, roar!

And Sainte-Beuve--do you see him? I am working furiously. I have just

written a description of the forest of Fontainebleau, which has filled

me with a desire to hang myself on one of its trees! I was interrupted

for three weeks, and had a hard task to put myself in train to work

again. I have the peculiarity of a camel--I find it difficult to stop

when once I get started, and hard to start after I have been resting. I

have worked steadily for a year at a time. After which I loafed

definitely, like a _bourgeois_. It was difficult at first, and not at

all pleasant. It is time now that I should do something fine, something

that shall please me. That which would please me greatly for a quarter

of an hour would be to embrace you! When shall I be able to do so? From

now until that time, I send you a thousand sweet thoughts.

TO MAXIME DUCAMP.

CROISSET, _July 23, 1869_.

MY GOOD OLD MAX: I feel the need of writing you a long letter. I do not

know whether I shall have strength, but I will try.

Since his return to Rouen, after receiving his nomination for the place

of librarian (August, 1867), our poor Bouilhet was convinced that he

should leave his bones there. Everyone, including myself, pitied him for

his sadness. He did not appear the man he was formerly; he was

completely changed, except for his literary intelligence, which remained

the same. In short, when I returned to Paris, in June, I found him a

lamentable figure. A journey that he made to Paris on account of his

_Mademoiselle Aïssé_, because the manager demanded that certain changes

be made in the second act, was so difficult for him that he could

scarcely drag himself to the theatre.

On visiting him at his house, the last Sunday in June, I found Dr. P----

of Paris, X---- of Rouen, Morel, the alienist, and a good chemist, one

of Bouilhet's friends, named Dupré. Bouilhet dared not ask for a

consultation with my brother, realising that he was very ill and fearing

to hear the truth.

Dr. P---- sent him to Vichy, whence Villemain hastened to despatch him

back to Rouen. On debarking at Rouen, he finally summoned my brother.

The evil was found to be irreparable, as indeed Villemain had written

me.

During these last two weeks my mother has been at Verneuil, at the house

of the Mesdames V----, and letters have been delayed three days, so you

see what anxiety I have had. I went to see Bouilhet both days that he

was here, and observed some amelioration in his condition. His appetite

was excellent, as well as his courage, and the tumour on his leg had

diminished.

His sisters came from Carny in order to speak to him of religious

matters, and were so violent that they really scandalised a worthy canon

of the cathedral. Our poor Bouilhet was superb--he sent them packing!

When I left him for the last time, on Saturday, he had a volume of

Lamettrie on his night-table, which recalled to my mind my poor friend

Alfred Le Poittevin reading Spinoza. No priest was summoned. His anger

against his sisters appeared to sustain him until Saturday, and then I

departed for Paris, in the hope that he would live a long time.

On Sunday, at five o'clock, he became delirious, and recited aloud the

scenario of a drama of the Middle Ages on the Inquisition. He called for

me, in order to show it to me, and was very enthusiastic over it. Then a

trembling seized him; he murmured, "Adieu! Adieu!" His head sank under

Léonie's chin, and he died very quietly. Monday morning my porter

awakened me with a telegram that announced the death in the usual terse

fashion of a despatch. I was alone; I packed my things, sent the news to

you, and went to tell it to Duplan, who was engaged in his business

affairs. Then I walked the streets an hour, and it was very hot near the

railway station. From Paris to Rouen in a coach filled with people.

Opposite me was a damsel that smoked cigarettes, stretched her feet out

on the seat and sang.

When I saw once more the towers of Mantes I thought I should go mad, and

I believe I was not far from it. Seeing me very pale, the damsel offered

me her _eau de Cologne_. It revived me a little, but what a thirst! That

of the desert of Sahara was nothing to it. At last I arrived at the Rue

de Bihorel; but here I will spare you details.

I never met a better fellow than little Philip; he and that good Léonie

took admirable care of Bouilhet. I approved of everything they had done.

In order to reassure Bouilhet, and to persuade him that he was not

dangerously ill, Léonie had refused to marry him, and her son encouraged

her in this resistance. This marriage was so much the fixed intention of

Bouilhet, however, that he had had all the necessary papers drawn. As

for the young man, I found that he had behaved in every way like a

gentleman.

D'Osmoy and I conducted the ceremonies. A great many persons came to the

funeral, two thousand at least; the prefect, the procurer-general,

etc.,--all the little dignitaries! Would you believe that even while

following his coffin, I realised keenly the grotesqueness of the

ceremony? I fancied I could hear him speaking to me; I felt that he was

there, at my side, and it seemed as if he and I were following the

corpse of some one else! The weather was very hot, threatening a storm.

I was covered with perspiration, and the walk to the cemetery finished

me. His friend Caudron had chosen the spot for the grave, near that of

Flaubert senior. I leaned against a railing to breathe. The coffin stood

on the trestles over the grave. The discourses began (there were

three!); then I fainted, and my brother and a stranger took me away.

The next day I went to my mother, at Serquigny. Yesterday I went to

Rouen, to take charge of Bouilhet's papers; to-day I have read the

letters that have been sent to me, and oh! dear Max, it was hard!

In his will he left instructions to Léonie that all his books and papers

should be given to Philip, charging the latter to consult with four

friends in order to decide what to do with the unedited works: myself,

D'Osmoy, you, and Caudron. He left a volume of excellent poems, four

plays in prose, and _Mademoiselle Aïssé_. The manager of the Odéon does

not like the second act of this play; I do not know what he will do.

It will be necessary for you and D'Osmoy to come here this winter, so

that we may decide what shall be published. My head troubles me too much

for me to continue now, and besides, what more can I say?

Adieu! I embrace you tenderly. There is only you now, only you! Do you

remember when we wrote _Solus ad solum_?

In all the letters I have received I find this phrase: "We must close up

our ranks." One gentleman, whom I do not know, has sent his card, with

these two words: _Sunt lacrymæ!_

TO EDMOND DE GONCOURT.

_Sunday evening, 1870._

HOW I pity you, my poor friend! Your letter overcame me this morning.

Except for the personal confidence you made me (which you may be sure I

shall keep), it told me nothing new, or rather, I mean that I had

guessed all that you wrote me. I think of you every day and many times a

day. The memory of my lost friends leads me fatally to the thought of

you! The schedule has been well filled during the past year--your

brother, Bouilhet, Sainte-Beuve, and Duplan! My dreams are darkened by

the shadows of tombs, among which I walk.

But I dare not complain to you; for your grief must surpass all those

one could feel or imagine.

Do you wish me to speak of myself, my dear Edmond? Well, I am engrossed

in a work that gives me much pain,--it is the preface to Bouilhet's

book. I have glided over the biographical part as much as possible. I

shall write more at length after an examination of his works, and still

more upon his (or our) literary doctrines.

I have re-read all that he ever wrote. I have run through our old

letters. I have found a series of souvenirs, some of which are thirty

years old. It is not very cheerful work, as you may imagine! And

besides, here at Croisset, I am pursued by his phantom, which I find

behind every bush in the garden, on the divan in my study, and even

among my garments--in my dressing-gown, which sometimes he used to wear.

I hope to think less about him when this sad work is finished,--in about

six weeks. After that I shall try to re-write _Saint Antony_, although

my heart is not in it now. You know well that one always writes with the

thought of some particular person in view.

The particular person being, for me, no more, my courage fails me.

I live alone here with only my mother, who grows visibly older from day

to day. It has become impossible to hold any serious conversation with

her, and I have no one to whom I can talk.

I hope to go to Paris in August, and then I shall see you. But where

shall you be? Write to me about yourself sometimes, my poor Edmond! No

one pities you more than I. I embrace you warmly.

TO GEORGE SAND.

_Sunday, June 26, 1870._

SOMEONE forgets her old troubadour, who has just come from the funeral

of a friend. Of the seven friends that used to gather at the Magny

dinners, only three remain! I am stuffed with coffins, like an old

churchyard! I have had enough of it, frankly!

Yet in the midst of all this, I go on working! I finished last night the

preface to my poor Bouilhet's book. I intend to see whether some means

may not be found to produce a comedy of his in prose. After that I shall

take up _Saint Antony_ once more.

And you, dear master, what has become of you and yours? My niece is in

the Pyrenees, and I live here alone with my mother, who grows more and

more deaf, so that my existence is far from lively. I should go to some

warmer climate. But to do that I have neither time nor money. So I must

erase and re-write, and dig away as hard as possible.

I shall go to Paris early in August. I shall stay here through October,

in order to see the performance of _Aïssé_. My absence will be limited

to a week at Dieppe about the end of the month. These are my projects.

The funeral of Jules de Goncourt was very sad. Théo was there and shed

floods of tears.

TO MADAME REGNIER.

_Thursday evening, 7 o'clock, 1871._

DEAR MADAME: I have had to occupy me during the last few weeks

_First_: the arrangements regarding Bouilhet's tomb;

_Second_: plans about his monument;

_Third_: looking after his volume of poems, which has just gone to

press;

_Fourth_: finding an engraver to make his portrait;

_Fifth_: all my time for two weeks was taken up with _Aïssé_, I shall

read it to-morrow to the actors. The rehearsals will begin next

Saturday, and the play will be produced about the first of January.

I was obliged to leave Croisset so unexpectedly that my servant and my

belongings will not arrive until three days later. A detailed account of

the intrigues I have had to demolish would fill a volume.

I have engaged the actors. I have worked myself on the costumes at the

Cabinet des Estampes; in short, I have not had a moment's rest for two

weeks; and this petty life, so exasperating and so busy, will last at

this rate at least two full months.

What a world! I am not surprised that it killed my good Bouilhet!

Besides, I have re-written my preface to his books, as it displeased me

in its former state.

I beg you, for heaven's sake, to give me a little liberty for the moment

because with the best will in the world, it is impossible for me to do

everything at once. I must attend first to the most pressing affairs.

Besides, you are wrong to wish to publish _now_. What good will it do?

Where would you find readers?

I do not hide from you the fact that I find rather unjust your amiable

reproaches regarding the voyage to Mantes. Why can you not understand

that it would be very painful to me to go to Mantes? Every time I pass

before the buffet, I turn away my head! Nevertheless, I will keep my

promise. But it would be easier for me to go from Paris to Mantes than

to stop there in passing. Do not be vexed with me any longer; pity me,

rather!

TO GEORGE SAND.

_Tuesday, April 16, 1872._

DEAR GOOD MASTER: I ought to have replied at once to your first letter,

so sweet and tender. But I was too sad. The physical force to do it

failed me.

To-day, at last, I have begun to hear the birds sing and to notice the

green leaves. The sunshine no longer irritates me, which is a good sign.

If I could only follow my inclination to travel, I should be saved.

Your second letter (that of yesterday) moved me to tears. How good you

are! What a kind heart! I have no need of money just at present, thank

you. But if I were in need of it, I should certainly ask you for it.

My mother left Croisset to Caroline, on condition that I should retain

my apartments there. So until the complete liquidation of the

succession, I shall remain here. Before deciding upon the future, I

must know what I shall have to live upon; after that, we shall see.

Shall I have the courage to live absolutely alone in a solitary place? I

doubt it. I am growing old. Caroline cannot live here now. She has two

places already, and the house at Croisset is expensive to keep up.

I believe that I shall give up my lodgings in Paris. Nothing calls me

there any more. All my friends are dead, and the last, my poor Théo, is

not likely to be here long. I fear it! Ah, it is hard to make oneself

over at fifty years!

I have realised during the last two weeks that my poor good mamma was

the being I have loved most! To lose her is like tearing away a part of

my own body.

TO THE BARONESS LEPIC.

AT MY HERMITAGE,

September 14 (the month

called Boédromion by the

Greeks), 1872.

I TAKE up my pen to write to you, and, shutting myself up in the silence

of my study, I permit myself, O beautiful lady, to burn at your feet

some grains of purest incense!

I say to myself: She has gone to the new Athens with the foster-sons of

Mars! Their limbs are covered with brilliant blue, while I wear a rustic

coat! Glittering swords dangle at their sides, while I carry only my

pens! Plumes ornament their heads, while I have scarcely any hair! Many

cares and much study have ravished from me that crown of youth--that

forest which the hand of Time, the destroyer, strips from our brows.

This is the reason why my breast is torn by blackest jealousy, O lovely

lady!

But your missive, thank the gods! came to me like a refreshing breeze,

like a veritable perfume of dittany.

If I could only have the certainty of seeing you, at no distant time,

amid our fields, settled near us! The rigour of the approaching blasts

of winter would be softened by your presence.

As to the political outlook, your anxieties are, perhaps, greater than

they need be. We must hope that our great national historian will close,

for a time, the era of revolutions. May we see the doors of the temple

of Janus shut forever! That is the desire of my heart, as a friend of

the arts and of innocent gaiety.

Ah, if all men, fleeing the pomp of courts and the agitations of the

Forum, would listen to the simple voice of nature, there would be only

happiness here below, the dances of shepherds, fond embraces beneath the

trees on one side and another--here, there, everywhere! But my ideas run

away with me.

Will Madame your mother devote herself always to the occupations of

Thalia? Very well! She proposes to face the public in the house of

Molière. I comprehend that, but I believe it would be better (in the

interest of her dramatic lucubration) if I myself should take this fruit

of her muse to the director of that establishment. Then, as soon as I

should arrive in the capital, I should make my toilet, call my servant

and command him to go and find a coach for me in the public square; I

should enter the vehicle, drive through the streets, arrive at the

Théâtre Française, and finish by finding our man. All this would be for

me only the affair of a moment!

In declaring myself, Madame, your unworthy slave, I depose

PRUD' HOMME.

TO EMILE ZOLA.

CROISSET, near Rouen, _June 3, 1874_.

I HAVE read it--_La Conquête de Plassans_--read it all at one breath, as

one swallows a glass of good wine; then I ruminated over it, and now, my

dear friend, I can talk sensibly about it. I feared, after the _Ventre

de Paris_, that you would bury yourself in the "system" in your

resolution. But no! You are a good fellow! And your latest book is a

fine, swaggering production!

Perhaps it fails in making prominent any special place, or having a

central scene (a thing that never happens in real life), and perhaps

also there is a little too much dialogue among the accessory characters.

There! in picking you to pieces carefully, these are the only defects I

discover. But what power of observation! what depth! what a masterly

hand!

That which struck me most forcibly in the general tone of the work was

the ferocity of passion underlying the surface of good-fellowship. That

is very strong, old friend, very strong and broad, and well sustained.

What a perfect _bourgeois_ is Mouret, with his curiosity, his avarice,

his resignation, and his flatness! The Abbé Faujas is sinister and

great--a true director! How well he manages the woman, how ably he makes

himself her master, first in taking her up through charity, and then in

brutalising her!

As to her (Marthe), I cannot express to you how much I admire her, and

the art displayed in developing her character, or rather her malady. Her

hysteric state and her final avowal are marvellous. How well you

describe the breaking-up of the household!

I forgot to mention the Tronches, who are adorable ruffians, and the

Abbé Bouvelle, who is exquisite with his fears and his sensibility.

Provincial life, the little gardens, the Paloque family, the Rastoil,

and the tennis-parties,--perfect, perfect!

Your treatment of details is excellent, and you use the happiest words

and phrases: "The tonsure like a cicatrice;" "I should like it better if

he went to see the women;" "Mouret had stuffed the stove," etc.

And the circle of youth--that was a true invention! I have noted many

other things on the margins, viz.:

The physical details which Olympe gives regarding her brother; the

strawberry; the mother of the abbé ready to become his pander; and her

old trunk.

The harshness of the priest, who waves away the handkerchief of his poor

sweetheart, because he detects thereon "an odour of woman."

The description of the sacristy, with the name of M. Delangre on the

wall--the whole phrase is a jewel.

But that which surpasses everything, that which crowns the whole work,

is the end! I know of nothing more powerful than that _dénouement_.

Marthe's visit at her uncle's house, the return of Mouret, and his

inspection of the house! One is seized by fear, as in the reading of

some fantastic tale, and one arrives at this effect by the tremendous

realism, the intensity of truth. The reader feels his head turned, in

sympathy with Mouret.

The insensibility of the _bourgeois_, who watches the fire seated in his

armchair, is charming, and you wind up with one sublime stroke: the

apparition of the _soutane_ of the Abbé Serge at the bedside of his

dying mother, as a consolation or a chastisement!

There is one bit of chicanery, however. The reader (that has no memory)

does not know by instinct what motive prompts M. Rougon and Uncle

Macquart to act as they do. Two paragraphs of explanation would have

been sufficient.

Never mind! it is what it is, and I thank you for the pleasure it has

given me.

Sleep on both ears, now your work is done!

Lay aside for me all the stupid criticisms it draws forth. That kind of

document interests me very much.

TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

DIEPPE, _July 28, 1874_.

MY DEAR FRIEND: As Saturday is for you a kind of consecrated day, and as

I could be in Paris only one day, which was last Saturday, I shall not

be able to see you on your return from Helvetia.

Know, then, that _Le Sexe Faible_ was enthusiastically received at the

Cluny Theatre, and it will be acted there after Zola's piece, that is,

about the last of November.

Winschenk, the director of this little box of a theatre, predicts a

great pecuniary success. Amen!

It goes without saying, it is the general opinion that I lower myself in

making my appearance in an inferior theatre. But this is the story:

Among the artists engaged by Winschenk for my play was Mlle. Alice

Regnault. He feared that she would be taken by the Vaudeville Theatre,

and that the Vaudeville would not allow her to appear in my play. Will

you be kind enough to inform yourself discreetly of the state of the

case when you are in Paris?

I shall return to Croisset Friday evening, and Saturday I shall begin

_Bouvard et Pécuchet_. I tremble at the prospect, as one would the night

before embarking for a voyage around the world!

All the more reason why we should meet and embrace.

TO MAURICE SAND.

CROISSET, _Sunday, June 24, 1876_.

YOU have forestalled me, my dear Maurice! I wished to write to you, but

I waited until you should be a little more free, more alone. I thank you

for your kind thought.

Yes, there are few of us left now. And if I do not remain here long, it

is because my former friends have drawn me to them.

This has seemed to me like burying my mother a second time. Poor, dear,

great woman! What genius and what a heart! But she lacked nothing; it

is not she who calls for pity!

What shall you do now? Shall you remain at Nohant? That dear old house

must seem terribly empty to you. But you, at least, are not alone. You

have a wife--a rare woman!--and two exquisite children. While I was with

you there, I felt above all my sadness, two desires: to run away with

Aurore, and to kill Monsieur ...! That is the truth: it is useless to

try to analyse the psychology of the thing.

I received yesterday a very tender letter from the good Tourgueneff. He,

too, loved her! But who did not love her? If you had beheld the grief of

Martine in Paris! It was overwhelming.

Plauchut is still at Nohant, I suppose. Tell him I love him after seeing

him weep so bitterly.

And let your own tears flow freely, my dear friend! Do not try to

console yourself--it would be almost impossible. Some day you will find

within yourself a deep and sweet certainty that you were always a good

son, and that she knew it well. She spoke of you as a blessing.

And after you shall have joined her once more, and after the

great-grandchildren of the grandchildren of your two little daughters

also shall have rejoined her, and when for a long time people have

ceased to talk of the things and the persons that surround us at

present--in some centuries to come--there will still be hearts that will

palpitate at her words! People will read her books, will ponder over her

thoughts, will love as she loved.

But all that _does not give her back to you_! With what shall we sustain

ourselves, then, if pride fails us, and what man can feel more of that

for his mother than yourself?

Now, my dear friend, adieu! When shall we meet again? For I feel an

insatiable desire to talk of _her_!

Embrace Madame Maurice for me, as I embraced her on the stairs at

Nohant, also your little ones.

Yours, from the depths of my heart.

TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

_Night of August 28, 1876._

YOUR letter has rejoiced me, young man! But I advise you to moderate

yourself, in the interest of literature.

Take care! all depends upon the end one wishes to attain. A man who has

accredited himself an artist has no right to live like other men.

All that which you tell me about Catulle Mendès does not surprise me at

all. He wrote to me the day before yesterday, to ask me to give him

_gratis_ the fragments of the _Château des Coeurs_, and also the

unedited stories that I had just finished. I replied that it was quite

impossible, which is true. Yesterday I wrote him a rather sharp letter,

as I was indignant at the article on Renan. It attacked him in the

grossest fashion, and there was also some humbug about Berthelot. Have

you read it, and what do you think of it? In short, I said to Catulle,

first, that I wished him to efface my name from the list of his

collaborators; and, second, not to send me his journal any more! I do

not wish to have anything in common with such fellows! It is a very bad

set, my dear friend, and I advise you to do as I have done--let them

entirely alone. Catulle will probably reply to my letter, but my

decision is taken, and that is an end of it. That which I cannot pardon

is the base democratic envy.

The tiresome article on Offenbach goes to the extremest limits about his

comic spirit. And what stupidity! I mean the joke that was invented by

Fiorantino in 1850, and is still alive to-day!

In order to make a triad, add the name of Littré, the gentleman who

pretends that we are all descended from apes; and last Friday the

butchery of Sainte-Beuve! Oh, the idiocy of it!

As to myself, I am working very hard, seeing no one, reading no

journals, and bawling away like a maniac in the seclusion of my study. I

pass the whole day, and almost the whole night, bent over my table, and

admire the sunrise with great regularity! Before my dinner (about seven

o'clock) I splash about in the _bourgeoise_ waves of the Seine.--_À

propos_ of health, you do not appear to me to look very ill. All the

better! Think no more about it!

TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

_Wednesday night, 1880._

MY DEAR FRIEND: I do not know yet what day De Goncourt, Zola, Alphonse

Daudet and Charpentier will come here to breakfast and dine, and perhaps

to sleep. They must decide this evening, so that I may know by Friday

morning. I think they will come on Monday. If your eye will permit you

then, kindly transport your person to the dwelling of one of these

rascals, learn when they expect to leave, and come along with them.

Should they all pass Monday night at Croisset, as I have only four beds

to offer, you will take that of the _femme de chambre_--who is absent

just now.

Commentary: I have conjured up so many alarms and improbabilities

regarding your malady, that I should be glad, purely for my own

satisfaction, to have you examined by _my_ Doctor Fortin, a simple

health officer, but a man I consider very able.

Another observation: If you have not the wherewithal to make the

journey, I have a superb double louis at your service. To refuse through

mere delicacy would be a very stupid thing to do!

A last note: Jules Lemaître, to whom I have promised your protection in

regard to Graziani, will present himself at your place. He has talent

and is a true littérateur,--a _rara avis_, to whom we must give a cage

larger than Havre.

Perhaps he too will come to Croisset on Monday; and as it is my

intention to stuff you all, I have invited Doctor Fortin, so then he may

extend his services to the sick ones!

The festival would lack much in splendour if my "disciple" were not

there.

Thy old friend.

P.S.--I received this morning an incomprehensible letter, four pages

long, signed Harry Alis. It appears that I have wounded him! How? In any

case, I shall ask his pardon. _Vive_ the young bloods!

I have re-read _Boule de Suif_, and I maintain that it is a masterpiece.

Try to write a dozen stories like that, and you will be a man! The

article by Wolff has filled me with joy! O eunuchs!

Madame Brainne has written me that she was enchanted with it. So did

Madame Lapierre!

You will remember that you promised me to make some inquiries of

D'Aurevilly. He has written this of me: "Can no one persuade M. Flaubert

not to write any more?" It might be a good time now to make certain

extracts from this gentleman's works. There is need of it!

How about the _Botanique_? How is your health? And how goes the volume

of verse?

Sarah Bernhardt seems to me gigantic! And the "fathers of families"

petition for the congregations!

Decidedly, this is a farcical epoch!

[Illustration]

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

erected a sanctury=> erected a sanctuary {pg 9}

Pecuchet=> Pécuchet {pg 62}

two abysse's, twixt=> two abysses, 'twixt {pg 5 RABELAIS}

Le Deluge=> Le Déluge {pg 7 PREFACE TO LOST SONGS}

which Theophile Gautier called=> which Théophile Gautier called {pg 14

PREFACE TO LOST SONGS}

Comedie Française=> Comédie Française {pg 4 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

M. Faure=> M. Fauré {pg 4 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

Moliere's=> Molière's {pg 8 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

ex-Rue de l'Imperatrice=> ex-Rue de l'Impératrice {pg 11 LETTER TO

MUNICIPALITY}

a seeond-rate=> a second-rate {pg 12 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

alalthough=> although {pg 34 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}

Eugene Suë=> Eugène Suë {pg 66 CORRESPONDENCE}

archælogical researches=> archæological researches {pg 86

CORRESPONDENCE}

l'Historie de Ma Vie=> l'Histoire de Ma Vie {pg 105 CORRESPONDENCE}

End of Project Gutenberg's Bouvard and Pécuchet, part 2, by Gustave Flaubert